Indie Game Awards

This ceremony celebrates a world where people can do stuff that is really off the wall.

'Stuff that just cannot make it into mainstream games,' according to the compere of the IGF Awards host Bytejacker regular Anthony Carboni.

The Best Student Game Award with $2,500 was won by the developers of FRACT from the University of Montreal. "I took a chance at 28, and decided to go back to school and get into making games," said Richard Flanagan.

The Technical Achievement Award, also Excellence in Audio Award, as well as the $10,000 Direct2Drive Vision award, went to 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent' from Frictional Games in Sweden. 'After three years of thinking we're not going to make games anymore and hating everything and living on noodles..... and getting awards for it, that seems like too much.'

The winners of the Nuovo Award were both totally speechless and dressed in the costumes and the colors of the two Nidhogg developers. Said very little. Very funny.

The IGF isn't here to makes small things bigger. The beauty of the small is what the IGF is all about. The 2011 Seamus McNally Grand Prize went to Minecraft from Mojang, a sandbox game which allows players to build things with textured 3D cubes. While the Independent Game Festival is more like an all-in Frat Party, the sentiments are real, the jokes hilarious and the majority of the recipients are honestly stunned and happy.